Just did an inspection of a tip and found that I had major grooving on a recoil guide, in several places!

Anyone had any problems w/ the tip grooving on recoils? Don't understand it, run 10lb mainline on this rod BUT never exceed 6lb test leaders, so really only am pulling as hard as 6lb line will allow, not that hard!. NOW, the thing that gets me is that I fished a lot of King Salmon w/ this rod this fall, and am wondering if the kings fighting style has contributed to this issue. Generally you get a couple of runs in the 50-200yd range out of one fish, and this rod has caught a couple hundred this fall. Could it be that these fish have caused this grooving?

Man, just not sure what to think about these guides anymore. When we are talking nylon line eating through these guides, kinda bothers me. Only other thing I can use to explain this is the fact that there is debris at a microscopic level on the line and after 3 months of those fish, it has burned through those guides. as an aside, have never had any lines ever eat through a guide using SIC's, in any time frame!

Are the fish to blame, are these guides just not cut out for hard fishing.? Only other expalination I can think of would be fishing in below freezing temps and the ice on the line is doing it, but just can't see how. They've only been on this rod for 10months?

Not sure what to think. Anyone have thoughts?
Tim

Not sure, but it is possible that the heat generated between the guide and line on a 200ft. run might actually be melting the guide or at least making the metal soft enough so the line is wearing through it.

The Recoil guides are light, no one I know of here has said they were as wear resistant as the Fuji or Titans guides. It's been reported before especially in the fly rods that the tips wear quickly. The Ti memory wire is only about as hard as a good stainless wire, many ,many times softer than any ceramic ring. Chromed wire guides are about 3 times more wear resistant initially. As many have said before there was a reason we went to ceramics many years ago, and none of the new wire and non-ceramic guide rings have changed that.

Confirm that others have reported this also. That's one of the 'price' of using Recoils. Even the lowly oxide guides are harder than the recoils. To be fair, most who use recoils do not report this. Apparently most are not as demanding with as long a run as yours.

Mo

ps: I wonder if factory made GLXs include grooving of the recoils as part of their warranty coverage for the life of the rod.

Just not the recoil metal guides grove any metal guide well grove during a season of heavy fishing with mono. line. If you use the super braded line these guid well start grooving much faster.
Good Wraps Bob

That's why I plan on using a conventional Silicon Carbide tip (titanium frame) and stripper guide (titanium frame Fuji TATSG for lightness) when I'm using recoils on my next rod. The tip is where the most friction/heat is generated, so I think its better especially since I'll be using very light line on it and the last thing I want is for any heat to damage the line.

Try Single foot wire fly guides coated with Tich or TiGold, be weary of the black guides by Pac Bay, the Baston double blacks are better but still who knows how hard they are. Hard Chrome is only around 1000 on the Vickers scale, alu oxide 1200-1400, coating harder than that. Go Concept guideing... light on the tip, and hard in the coatings..SF wire fly guides

I learned this lesson years ago when I was guiding for false albacore. After about 30 fish the wire tip would have a nice little groove. In a week of fishing even the snakes guides would have grooves cut into um. After changing guides on the same rod several times I decided to go with ceramics and have never had to replace a guide since due to line wear. I saw a fellow in Costa Rica using an OEM rod with wire guides that the tip top was cut into after two sailfish, he was using 50# test Spectra backing. My advice is; if you are going to use the rod on fish that run do not use snakes or wire tip tops. When I talk about running I'm not talking about a fish that never gets the flyline off the reel.

I wonder how much effect the steelhead we get here in ohio would have on the recoils. Most fish are in the 4-10 pound range. We usually get a few good runs out of them before landing, but nothing like what a salmon will produce (or NY steelhead for that matter). I've used the AMTAK Titan/RSPG Recoil combo on many of my customer floatrods and haven't come across this issue yet. I've used them for a while now with 8-10 mainline and 4-6 fluoro tippet. To be honest, I hope I never come across this issue either!

Domenic

The one and only Recoil tip top that I used grooved very quickly. The customer was just a weekend Bass angler and the tip was ruined within 6 months of him having the spinning rod.

I will not use another Recoil tip again.


.........................



Better to have and not need than to need and not have.

I fished with a friend last summer that was using a G Loomis factory rod with recoils, but it had a ceramic tip that another fellow told me was SIC. I'm glad I read this thread because I wanted to try recoils for bass rods with braid.

Chuck

Well Guys,
thats why I posted it, thought some of you would like to know. BUT I was suprised, to say the least, Theres at least 5-6 grooves in the tip, no doubt from putting side pressure on fish. This rod is a float fishing rod and I can tell the difference in a down-stream drift, that is how I noticed it.

Can't say that I agree w/ the gentlemen who posted that ceramics get groved, as I have had some rods w/ superlines on them, fish the same way EXCEPT w/ much more pressure put on the fish, and no grooves after years.

Domenic, I am sorry to say this, but I think your OH steelhead will do the same, just on a longer timeframe. Hurts me too, as I endorsed these guides also. Gonna mention this to Loomis, as I have helped them w/ the great lakes series of rods, but we'll see what happens w/ this. For now would say stick w/ SIC but to each their own...
Tim

Tim,
Bob Balcombe made the comment that ANY metal guides groove. He was referring to metal rings, NOT frames (I think!) Nobody mentioned grooving in ceramic guides

Mike (Southgate, MI)
If I don't want to, I don't have to and nobody can make me (except my wife) cuz I'm RETIRED!!

I think Bob Balcombe summed it up. In Bass fishhing tournaments useing Spinner Baits and Buzz Baits on mono line I can burn grooves in metal guides rings in no time. Wont happen with ceramic. I saw them on G Loomis factory rods and I thought,,,,,,,this is not good. Even If it does have a ceramic tip top, the next 2-3 guides will groove. At least that's been my experience.

Jay

Tim, I am so glad you posted this information and started this thread. Like someone else mentioned, I have been meaning to try a set of them on one of my rods but this has cured me of that impulse for sure. I will stick with my current routine which is the smallest ceramics I can get away with and 2 coats of Permagloss on the wraps to keep them as light as possible but still get the smoothness, quietness, and durability of ceramics. All this talk lately about Recoils making noise and grooving is all I need to hear.

Steve,
The thing is that these guides help the blank perform at its highest level, meaning a rod completed w/ these guides fishes GREAT. You get full response out of the blank from hooksets, to casting. Thats why it is painful to say this....

Looked at the other guides (today) below that one, and they were all grooved!

Was told that this could be in isolated incident, that I could have gotten a bad batch that weren't tempered right.

Don't know, but I have some special blanks that I have been holding onto for a while, and tell you what, I will have a hard time putting recoils on those, they're gonna get TATSG'S. Haven't had a prob. w. those, and they are nearly as light, but not nearly as durable....

We'll have to wait and see...
Tim

These guides don't wear like ceramics by any means and they certainly wouldn't be my choice for heavy fly rods or especially spinning/casting(I can't imagine not using ceramics for these kinds of rods),but they should be more than adaquate for light to medium weight fly rods IMHO.Just keep the flyline clean to minimize wear.

If a person really wanted to they could add a small ceramic tip top(titanium Fugi Concept would probably be best) or even a light wire chrome or light TiCH plated fly top to a set of the Recoils and minimize much of the wear and probably some of the noise.I would definitely use ceramics for the stripper guide & next guide as well.

Even the heavy wire Recoil guides are lighter than chrome plated wire guides and thus offer some performance advantages(a lighter,crisper feeling blank with faster recovery) so I wouldn't write them off all together.A 5wt or lighter rod would probably last a fairly long time with minimal wear on the guides and the rod would feel as nice or nicer than any other due to the minimal amount of weight added with these guides.

The noise level with the light wire ones is definitely much higher than other guides and you can hear them squeek pretty good when you let a dry line slip through them.To be honest,I don't much care for the light wire guides and don't plan on using them any more,but the noise level of the heavy wire version when combined with a wet or lubed line isn't too bad from what I've seen so far and I think the slightly thicker ring guage would be a bit easier on one's flylines.They certainly aren't anywhere near as silent as ceramics and they are slightly noisier than chrome plated guides,but it's not overly distracting IMHO.